by Riley Mason
The idea of lifting myself to my feet is gone and out of my head completely. I’m slouched over and I’m crying. It’s like the wall that I built around my own head to protect myself from what weight and darkness those memories that I lost could carry finally crumbled and I’m left there with whatever is left of me.
Syllis is patient, of that I’m at least grateful for. He doesn’t want to rush me and I don’t really want to be rushed either. After a few minutes pass, I get myself up to my feet, I wipe my eyes off on the way up so that the tears only smear my face instead of flowing down it. I just let him into my head, I allowed him that intimate connection, I doubt I needed to hide the tears that came out but at the same time I wanted them out of the spotlight. I let him in more than any other person living or dead, something that I’ve made a career out of killing and I allowed it inside of me and gave it full control of the person I was. I actually felt brutally sick to my stomach.
“What did you find?” I asked, my lip was shaking and there were fresh tears lining up to come out of my eyes faster than I could wipe away the old ones. “Is it bad?” I felt like such a child asking such a question that was so painted black and white when there was so much grey in what could be inside my head but in that moment, tied in those extremes, that was the only way that I felt I could ask such a question.
“There is more than one personality inside of your head,” he says to me and it breaks me, my lip trembles harder now and I have to move my hands over my face to stifle the sounds that are falling out of me because the sounds of the tears are deafening to my ears. “There are reasons that you can’t remember and more so than the other minds that live inside of yours, you’ve had more than one life. By what I’ve seen, this is your seventh incarnation in this life all of which you were a Chaser but all of which ended in tragic death.
“You’re a strong woman, no one would ever think to deny that but you’re a danger to yourself in this moment. If you want to fight in this war and what’s to come, I need you to allow me to do something and this will only come with your permission.”
I hunch over. It’s like I’ve been told that my newborn child didn't make it beyond the labor. It was like my life was crumbling all around me and the parts that were being scraped off were being burned so that they could never serve a single purpose again. It was like a razor sliding its edge over the surface of my heart.
“I need to dampen those memories. Block them out so that parts of them aren’t leaking into your forward consciousness. You’ve been touched by the supernatural, I don’t think you could even deny that. I think there are bits and pieces that can be constructed with what’s inside of you but for now, with the timing that’s playing against us, we need to put all this into perspective. We have to assemble what we can out of what’s there and we need to live with it. We can’t touch it while this war is ongoing, to do that would be to put too much stress on your consciousness and it’ll break. A mind as well adapted and strengthened as yours, once it breaks, I don't know how possible it will be to put it back together once that happens.”
“What about what Azrael did to me, or Gabriel, or the Angel. All of them have been inside of my head and now I’ve let you in there too. What can I have if I can’t have my own mind to myself.”
“This will black out everyone,” Syllis said to me.
“Except you,” I said back. There had to be someone left inside of there with access to pull my strings depending on how they wanted them pulled. I doubt that the darkness would want her servants running around with too much free will. That and I’m more than sure she’s seen the outcome of what happens here.
“I’ll be the only one that has that ability once we lockdown the other stray parts of your mind.”
“What do I keep of myself? Do I have a choice in what’s going to be shut out from me?”
“I think for now we need to concentrate solely on what serves this war a purpose and getting to the last seal before Gabriel and the wraith get there. This army is building and it’s building fast. We need to put our own army together and we need to get to the seal before anyone else can. We need that piece to control this game. Everything personal will need to be put on hold.”
The tears begin to pick up some momentum again. I imagine they’re like waves on a beach somewhere in the Pacific washing up on a shore that forgets about them the second they slide over sand and wait for the next one to fall and slide, an endless ocean waiting to fall on its surface. How can I make a decision like that? Tell someone that I barely know what parts of my mind are precious enough to me to keep alive. What risks I take putting the other parts into a corner of my head where my consciousness will forget about them entirely. The war is important but so is the woman that I am. “Fine,” I finally say, it’s like managing a razor blade through my lips and tongue and down my throat. “Do it.”
Chapter 99
Gabriel stood behind the double mirror standing there watching both his reflection and the stone wall that was on the other side of the mirror. At the other end, there was a long stone hall that waited there. It was wide and long, almost the length of a quarter of a football field.
He watched it and he waited. This was the last thing that needed to be done before he could hunt the last seal. That’s when he finally wouldn't need that bitch running around out there getting close to what he was trying to hold onto.
Gabriel still wasn't entirely sure what her motivation was but he wasn't able to get close enough to her to find out either. He almost had her, he could feel the connection start to solidify at the trailer but something took her out of there before that connection could make itself happen. Especially before he could pull thoughts from inside of her head. He had a place inside of her mind and he wanted it back sooner rather than later.
A knock at the door came and he responded for the person to come in.
“They’re ready,” Nasir said to him and he broke his concentration off where it was and then left with the mercenary and stepped into the other room.
He stood there in front of the mirror, his hands in his pockets, he was eager but a solemn look was still washed on his face. Despite the irritation of impatience to him his face remained steady and solidified, he didn't want to overstep, when that happened, there were mistakes that were made.
The door opened and five people stepped through it. All of them were
of decent age, younger rather than older. All of them were well dressed in suits and all of them were confused as to why they were here. Most of them had been kidnapped and chloroformed while they were in transit. Not one of them had any real idea why they were here in the first place.
Not a single one of them was restrained either. As they walked in to the room, Gabriel was specified on the commands that he wanted. “Find your spot and don't move,” he said to them every other person that came in. When he did, it registered and took over their heads and they took their spots and stood stone still.
When they were all in the room and all five of them were standing stationary in their assigned positions Gabriel looked over all of them. A blank controlled stare hung on all of their faces. “Gentlemen,” he said. “We’re going to be doing something. It’s come to our attention that we require a sacrifice. Needless to say, that all five you fit the criteria in which we are looking for except for one single point which happens to be the most important. The criteria calls for each of you to kill yourselves and since suicide is an essential part of this entire process, that’s what we need you to do.
“While I’m more than confident it can be done in any way that I see fit, we have on specific way that it needs to be done,” he said as he pointed to Nasir and then nodded to the men.
He waited a second for all of them to take the guns that were being placed in their hand.
“The guns are loaded and the safety is off, what I need from each of you in exact order of your position in the room is to pull the trigger up in your mouth and aim the muzzle at the roof of your mouth. Once there,
you’ll wait for the gun to go off of the person to your right, once it does, you do the same. Number one, start us off.”
The first gunshot spilled into the room and the blood that was locked inside of his skull exploded out and sprayed the wall behind him as it rained down and slid down the wall grabbing the chunks of bone and brain matter that had plastered itself to the wall as well. Before long, all five of the men had commit suicide in the precise way that Gabriel had told them to do it. There were no words argued to save their life, they didn't’ object one single time as to why they had to do it.
The lights in the room dimmed and went dark and then rivers of blue slid right next to Gabriel, they moved in from the floor, from the walls, from the ceiling and then formed the blue-eyed wraith in the room, standing there in the black that hugged his body as it walked to the bodies in the same order that they killed themselves in.
One by one, Gabriel watched as the wraith bent down and touched them in the wound that had killed them. Gabriel had done his part, the wraith now had five generals for the army that he had allowed the spirit to raise. Now it was time to get his hands on that final seal.
Before he left, he looked back at the men that had all killed themselves at his command. All of them standing there just as they had done before he had given them the order. All of them with a new set of jet black eyes tucked into their eyelids painting their face an entire different effect then they had when there was still blood moving through their bodies. When the door closed, all six bodies that were left in there vanished.
Chapter 100
Syllis took me back to the motel. I sat there by the window just like he did. I was expecting to see something but I wasn’t entirely sure if he was. He had a look on his face like he was seeing something but he never once said it aloud.
I turned and went to the minibar that I had stocked in the motel the first night that I had taken it over. The man downstairs, Wang was well paid for it. He made sure that he makeshift bar never went dry. I poured myself a shot of whiskey and drank it and poured myself another one.
I took a seat but Syllis stayed on his feet even when he turned to me. “There is someone that I need to take you to see,” he said to me.
“Who is that?” I ask. My voice sounds different to my ears knowing that there are things missing from my head. I know I'm not supposed to be aware of it but I can’t help it. I hope more than anything that Syllis can’t see that I still have things that I know he tried to take from me.
“A human that’s been instructed through the last nine generations of his family to hold things, valuable assets for the occult. He’s holding something that will give us the location of the third seal, a secret so well guarded that the Angel isn't even in possession of it.”
“I thought she was the last seal?” I ask.
“No,” Syllis says calmly. “She’s only made to appear that way, the third seal is an object, a very ancient artifact that was hidden by the Angels on Earth long ago.”
I take another sip. “How does he know what demons to listen to and which ones not too?” I ask.
“Only four can do it, I’m one of those four.”
“Why would you give this kind of power to another flesh and blood?”
“He’s well protected and his family has been both well compensated and well gifted in how to protect these scrolls and texts. Our father gave him the gift of sight and all the first-born sons of his family. For all time he will only produce sons to ensure that this secret is kept and the chromosome is passed from father to son the ability to see this sight. He knows we're coming already, he would know if another group was coming to him as well.”
I stand. “Why can’t he tell us how this ends then?” I ask.
“It doesn’t work like that. The sight only works to what is pertinent to the literature. If it doesn’t affect the sanctity of what he is protecting then he can’t see it. It is mean to keep himself and the text well.”
I look around and start to put my things together. I scratch my arm. Since Syllis adjusting my consciousness and organized the confusion out of what didn't need to be there, there’s been a hideous itch on my right arm that hasn’t been able to be satisfied no matter how many times I run my nails over it. Every time I look there’s nothing there and even when I run it under cold or hot water, it does nothing to stop the itch.
I grab the staff, spin it in my fingers, making sure that that skill is still attached to me somewhere before I hitch the weapon to the inside of my jacket. I also take the handgun and slide the chamber back and peek inside to make sure the bullet is in there. The habit of a loaded gun and the safety off isn’t one that I should be forgetting no matter what control was adjusted in my head.
I slide on my messenger bag too, I want my shotgun with me as well. As I move the strap over my body Sylis touches my shoulder and were standing in a hall in the basement of what looks like an apartment building.
The walls are painted an industrial white and grey and Syllis moves to the burgundy door and slams a fist on it three times. I can see the eye in the peep hole come through as I make eye contact with it. The enlarged pupil looks at me up and down and the to the Syllis before a series of locks unwind from behind the door.
Chapter 101
Syllis had told me that his name was Jak-Sanaan he didn't’ look old but the robe that he wore hid some muscle that was wrapped in the middle-aged man that had answered the door. It was a long black trench that hugged his body similar to the one that Syllis wore and a long black and white beard hung low on his face and split into two separate points at its edge. “You won’t need those in here,” he said to me.
I followed first, my eyes moving over the dusty scrolls and books that were all over the place in tightly organized stacks that seemed to cover every single place that I looked. There was more than enough in here to hold anyone’s entire memory.
“It goes back five thousand years,” he said to me.
“What does?” I ask.
“The texts and the novels in here. Since the first written records, the occult has been documented and transcribed.”
When we made it through the apartment, I could see that there was someone else in there too. It was another man, a lot younger than the one who had allowed us to enter. The man had green eyes and a sculpted face and his muscles under the garb that he wore were a lot more visible.
“My son, Kebaj,” he said, for the second time answered a question that was never allowed to get asked.
“You knew we were coming?” I asked him.
“I did, once Syllis had made the decision to come to me and I knew that he would bring company. I pulled the information that he would need as well.”
“How can you read demons minds?” I look back at Syllis but then back to Jak-Sanaan.
“It's not so much as a gift to read their minds,” the old man says and looks at his son. “It’s more that their mind is linked to mine and mine is a hub for the thoughts that they have. When I die all those thoughts are passed directly through my bloodline. A piece of all four demons are inside of me and my mind manages their own thoughts and requests.”
“But you have sight?”
“For my own safety I do to some extent we have mind control as well. With the abilities of force that we have at our disposal, the demons ensure that we have all we need to be able to serve them. That and we have our own private demons that serve only our service and ensure that we are kept alive and well as long as we serve the four.”
He hands the volumes to the demon standing behind me. My eyes follow them and then they turn back to the old man.
“Grand Central level four, they’ve been congregating there. I’d imagine their defending something,” the old man said.
“Level four,” I ask, I’ve lived in the city for almost as long as I can remember but I’ve never heard of the subway levels diving down that deep into the bedrock.
“Planned, partially constructed, but never built,” he said in reply. I didn’t
realize before but I caught it now as his eyes passed over the candlelight that was playing on a small end table next to him. The light did not’ catch in his eye. It meant one of two things, either he was a demon himself since their eyes even though they were dark never caught light, or he was blind.
Sylas turned without a word and put the scrolls except for one away. The one that he kept he tucked into a pouch that was tied into the trench that he wore. Before I could turn though the old man grabbed my hand. It wasn't out of anger and I got no strange feelings when his skin touched mine. He wasn’t a threat and I didn’t take him that way. “You need to be careful Arinna. The things at work around you are dangerous even for someone as strong as you are. Remember to see things for what they are and never what they appear to be.”
He let’s go of my hand before something must go off in his head that tells him that I’m going to pull it away now. “When you walk out that door, leave a piece of us in your mind no matter how hard they try and rip it out of you. If he dies, Gabriel is going to get to you, he’s your only barrier of protection from what he wants.”
I thanked him uncertain of how to take what he was saying to me. I didn't’ think to question his motives or what he saw, he could've seen anything, anyone part of me that was lingering up in my head. I ignored it as best as I could, there wasn’t enough of my inhibitions left to really dwell too hard on something that didn't’ make much sense. I turned and left and followed Syllis into the hallway.
When I got there I saw Syllis still in the hall, the dark that had fallen over the hallway had come next when I realized that all the lights that were strung to the ceiling had cracked and bled glass onto the floor. There were two rings of fire that ran down the side lengths of the hall, they weren’t making any smoke.